October 21, 2015

Sony has recently announced the introduction of the VPL-VW5000ES, a 5,000 lumens 4K SXRD™ laser light source projector. Sony’s new reference-quality unit is the first projector designed specifically for the largest and most lavishly equipped home cinema rooms that features 4K resolution powered by a laser light engine that provides a spectacular brightness of 5,000 lumens. The projector is also compatible with High Dynamic Range (HDR), emulates the new BT.2020 colour gamut, and covers the full DCI colour space.

Sony continues to be the only manufacturer designing projectors specifically for the home theatre market that provides native 4K resolution. Sony’s advanced SXRD panels are designed to produce outstanding native device contrast and when coupled with the laser light engine, the VPL-VW5000ES provides an infinite dynamic contrast ratio and 5,000 lumens of colour light output.

The VPL-VW5000ES covers the full DCI-P3 colour gamut. By taking advantage of its professional calibration tools the VPL-VW5000ES allows the user to choose to emulate the BT.2020 colour space, ensuring compatibility with upcoming home video formats. And by bringing together high brightness, infinite dynamic contrast and the latest signal processing technology, the VPL-VW5000ES provides compatibility with High Dynamic Range (HDR), enabling the viewer to see wider ranges of contrast and colours than ever before.

Sony's Advanced Motionflow feature reduces blur and maintains brightness and VPL-VW5000ES’ extremely fast imagers allow viewing of fast action content – especially sporting events – with great smoothness, even with 4K signals. Along with HDR and BT.2020 capabilities, the VPL-VW5000ES also includes an HDMI input that is HDCP 2.2 compatible. That same input has enough bandwidth to accept 4K 60p signals up to YCbCr 4:4:4 8bit or YCbCr 4:2:2 12bit, thus helping to ensure that the VPL-VW5000ES is prepared to handle all types of video content now and in the future.

The VPL-VW5000ES can be tilted as much as 30 degrees, allowing for flexible installations that take advantage of mirrors to place larger screens in smaller spaces, such as rear projection. Thanks to a newly developed liquid cooling system with low noise operation, the projector can also be located near viewers without impacting the enjoyment of a programme´s audio. The unit ships with a standard powered lens with a zoom ratio from 1.27 to 2.73:1 and lens shift capability of +/- 80% vertical and +/- 31% horizontal.

Benefits of the VPL-VW5000ES’ laser light engine include fast on/off times with no waiting for the projector to cool down – which means you can immediately turn it back on to resume binge-watching your favourite show. The light engine delivers a long operational life with a linear decrease in brightness, so the colour shifts seen with traditional lamp wear are not expected. But if the colour settings do shift over time, the VPL-VW5000ES includes a built-in re-calibration function that can be used to test how much the projector has drifted from its original factory calibration and reset it.

“The VPL-VW5000ES projector is truly the ultimate home cinema solution, joining an impressive line-up of Sony home theatre projectors specifically designed for the high-end installer market, like the VPL-GTZ1 and Lifespace UX´s LSPX-W1S Ultra Short Throw models,” said Thomas Issa, Product Manager at Sony Professional Europe. “Our new projector combines the best technologies found in our professional cinema projectors to offer spectacular image quality as well as reliability, bringing the home theatre experience to the next level.”

The VPL-VW5000ES will be available in Europe in the first quarter of 2016.